Even though efforts have been made to provide greater passive safety for vehicle occupants by the use of seat belts and air bags, accident statistics indicate front end collisions remain as the major accident type, resulting in fatalities and severe injuries. In automatic restraint systems, the air bag prevents the vehicle occupant's head and upper body from impacting the steering wheel, and the seat belt tightener takes up seat belt slack, applying a distributed load over the occupant's body contact area, to thereby allow the passenger to decelerate through the course of the collision. At sever impact levels, these contact forces may, however, result in facial bone fractures, and head-neck trauma.
After considerable research and experimentation the assembly of the present invention has been devised to provide an active control of a vehicle occupant's body, without applying direct contact forces to the occupant's body, and supplementing the passive safety systems provided by seat belts and air bags.